Body Panels?

FomocoReformed said
Alright, this is my new plan. I'm going to buy all the panels I need for my car through AMD with the moparts disount. I suppose I misrepresented a little when I said I can't do bodywork, I can't do FINISHING work like smoothing everything out and painting.

Once I get all the panels I'll take the stripped body, cut and tack the panels where they need to be so that all I need to do is have the shop finish the welds, blast and paint.

Thoughts?

My first thought is that bodymen are extremely picky in how things get done. You can have a guy who has been doing nut and bolt award winning work for 50years do sheetmetal, take it to another equally qualified guy and he's going to spend 2hrs telling you that the first guy was a moron and didn't know his head from his *** hole, and that he has to redo everything.

My opinion, worthless as it is, is that you take it to them STRIPPED, come up with an itemized list of exactly what you want done along with a timeline and a contract. Im sure they'll need a deposit to get started on it but don't give them more than you can afford to loose. Pay them only for work that gets done.

I lost 10k and a cancer free '68 Cougar to a body shop that I didn't cover my *** on, I gave them the money upfront, with no paperwork showing what I expected EXACTLY to get done. And when I started getting suspicious I was getting jerked around, instead of yanking my car out, I gave them the benefit of the doubt.

Check up on it frequently, don't take excuses, don't pay for work that hasn't been done, and have everything in writing. The price you were quoted seems ridiculously low to me as well. The only car I've ever sent to media blasting cost over a grand just to have it done. Quarters run nearly 400 bucks a piece with atleast 2 days labor each to put on. Full floor pan is almost 500 with around 2-3 days labor. and than factor in a week of labor for misc. things that inevitably are found. Than another weeks worth of labor or more depending on the paint job your talking about. Those are just ball park labor cost times, not the actual amount of time it'll take the shop to do it.